Saving with Tarentum Borough's GE LED Street Lighting

Tarentum Borough in Pennsylvania is converting 100 percent of its street lighting to GE's Evolve™ LED Scalable Cobrahead fixtures with dimmable photocells, saving the city nearly $40,000 a year.

THE EXPECTATION

Tarentum city officials explored a number of options for saving on energy costs, ultimately engaging GE in a discussion about its ecomagination℠ LED technology. GE conducted an audit of Tarentum's high-pressure sodium-vapor street lighting comprised of 310 100-watt fixtures and 120 250-watt fixtures, estimating total wattage usage and utility billing. This analysis showed Tarentum's old street lighting consumed 335,771 kilowatt hours (kWhs) of electricity annually, opposed to an estimated 112,517 kWhs to power GE's Evolve LED Roadway fixtures.

OUR SOLUTION

Taking these circumstances into account, GE Capital, Corporate Finance, facilitated financing that applies the borough's monthly street lighting savings of $3,800 toward its LED lighting purchase. As a result, the borough was able to achieve monthly positive cash-flow from day one of the project.

"It's a win-win situation. It's not going to cost our citizens any more money, we're getting beautiful light and we're dealing with a reputable company that has been around for more than a hundred years. GE made this decision very easy for us."

Tarentum Mayor Carl Magnetta, Jr

RESULTS & BENEFITS

Tarentum retrofitted 430 streetlights with dimmable and programmable new fixtures. The dimming capability will allow Tarentum to dim the lights to a prefixed percentage. The borough plans to dim the streetlights to a 30-percent reduction in light output from 12 a.m. to 5 a.m. The switch will save the city approximately 66 percent annually in energy and maintenance costs, equating to approximately $40,000 (based on a $.10 kWh rate and 4,000 hours of operation a year).

Start to finish, the decision was reached in four months after Tarentum learned of GE's technology and financing program. Tarentum was able to look into the program, ask questions and review the details quickly, which is significant due to the fact that in this case, the city was able to align this program with their budget and maintenance cycle.

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